Remembering Dave

This text was an email prepared and sent by Toronto Action for Social Change. It includes some personal words by the author and then the text of a speech given by Dellinger in Toronto in 1988, most of which is still relevant today.

Dave Dellinger is no longer with us, at least in physical form.
It's hard to imagine a world without such an amazingly strong, moral voice
for social justice and nonviolent transformation.

But Dave would likely be the first to sincerely and humbly reject
such a tribute, and then state that we live on through our work, through
our loved ones, through our friends and comrades.

Many of us in Homes not Bombs have been inspired by his legacy, and
dearly hold to the memory of his last public visit to Toronto almost two
winters ago.

Dellinger was a pacifist who was often written off by other
pacifists. He supported the Cuban Revolution, he was a vital bridge from
the older pacifist community to the many movements of the 1960s, supporting
the first march against the war in Vietnam in 1965 when many traditional
peace groups opposed it. And while he is perhaps best known as one of the 8
men indicted for the demonstrations in Chicago at the 1968 Democratic
Convention, he was also key organizer of the Siege of the Pentagon in 1967
and continued long after the 1960s to be involved in work around ending the
wars in Central America, apartheid in South Africa, the wars against Iraq
and Afghanistan...

Dellinger was also a key organizer of the Assembly of Unrepresented
People, a remarkable mid-1960s gathering which for the first time brought
together many of the issues and constituencies which would later blossom
into so many of the social movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Dellinger was a key advisor to Martin Luther King, Jr., was jailed
for three years as a war refuser during World War II, was one of the few
who was jailed for refusing to cooperate with the annual nuclear holocaust
drills in the 1950s, and wrote extensively about the revolutionary power of
nonviolence.

Dellinger's books: From Yale to Jail (his autobiography), More
Power Than We Know, and Revolutionary Nonviolence (all available through
used bookstores through www.abebooks.com) are a wonderful testament to his
years of resistance.

Reprinted below is the text of a talk, A Call to Resist, which he
delivered during an international war crimes tribunal organized in 1988 in
Toronto a week before the G-7 economic summit.

A week afterwards, following a rally of 3,000 people at Queen's
Park, and despite a huge police occupation of the downtown and no parade
permit, everyone marched on the Metro Convention Centre, despite
helicopters flying overhead blasting out the message that this was an
illegal march.

Some 200 people were arrested that afternoon for jumping barricades
and attempting to arrest the G-7 leaders (Reagan, Thatcher, Mulroney et
al.) for crimes against humanity and acts of state-sponsored terrorism. The
following Tuesday another 35 of us were arrested again as we tried to nab
the G-7 during a farewell lunch at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Thousands of police and the military were on hand to maintain
"public order" during the summit, and a huge concrete and chain link
barrier blocked off a chunk of the downtown, long before Seattle, the OAS,
and Quebec City. Our slogan, Arrest the REAL Terrorists, took hold, and the
focus on the terrorism committed by nation-states like the U.S., U.K.
France, Germany, Canada, Japan and Italy, challenged the summit's
hypocritical "anti-terrorism" message (what, you thought George W. was an
original???)

Dellinger also filled in at a spiritual gathering the next night,
replacing the dearly missed Phil Berrigan (who died 18 months ago), who had
planned to be in Toronto but was instead behind bars for one of his many
acts of nuclear disarmament.

"I think of something Albert Camus once said: he said beware of all
veterans. And he didn't just mean war veterans, he meant anti-war veterans,
veterans of our movement. Because although as one gets older one has
certain insights and experiences to draw on, we're all scarred and
conditioned by those experiences and by the times in which we were born and
in which we live. And one of the things that I learned in the 60s and
people like Clayton amongst others who taught me that was that every new
generation comes along with new insights and new perspectives and that we
really are all part of one another and all do need each other.

And if anyone my age or thereabouts or any of the older persons in
the audience doubt that, just think of what a marvelous experience it has
been, the job done by the organizers of the tribunal in bringing this all
together

And besides the educational value of the facts they've brought out
and the testimony and the impact that that will continue to have very
widely way beyond these borders, they made an important linkage which often
is not made, and that is: from education and information to direct action,
to taking the matters into places where they need to be taken -- I was
about to say into the streets, because that was the big slogan of the 60s,
go out into the streets, but that is one of the places it has to be.

And there is a gap of the week. That gives people time to absorb
and ponder, to think about what they've heard, to check out anything
they've heard, although I think the evidence has been so overwhelming that
any checking out that they do will be to the good, it also gives time for
nonviolence training.

It made me think of one of the actions in the US during the
Vietnam War time that was in October 1967. And there'd been quite a lot of
active nonviolent direct action and resistance here and there and
everywhere.

But the national coalition called the Mobilization Committee to End
the War in Vietnam, which was a broad coalition of anti-war forces, had
never itself promoted civil disobedience. And we decided in 1967 that the
time was long past due to do that. And we called for an action at the
Pentagon which we lovingly called the Siege of the Pentagon, and the slogan
was: From Protest to Resistance.

Now there was a lot of opposition from people who were not ready
for that and a lot of debate and discussion but what we came up with was a
three stage plan:

First we had a huge rally at the Lincoln Memorial, and then we had
a march across the bridge to the Pentagon and then it was not officially
civil disobedience, but it might turn into it, because there was a dispute
with the police over the route--they were trying to route us a way that
was not satisfactory. And as a matter of fact we did have to sit down on
the bridge before they yielded and we moved on.

But during the giant rally at the Pentagon, we thanked people for
coming, explained what was going to happen next and almost--I was one of
the MCs who did this--almost encouraged them not to go further if they
weren't ready. And then the third stage was at the Pentagon where we were
going to surround it and try to shut it down. And there also solely for the
purposes of separating from some people in good spirits and comradeship,
we had a brief rally at which we again thanked everybody for having been
there and then moved on to the Pentagon grounds for the civil disobedience.

And I was very happy to see that that is more or less what you are
going to do on June 19, a rally, then a march and then some people will
take more action.

Now the second element at the Pentagon on October 15, 1967 was that
it was the first time they brought out massive federal troops, supposedly
to guard the Pentagon. We didn't know it was going to happen until the
afternoon before, and people were coming in from all over the country, and
we were up until 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning taking stock of this,
particularly as other people arrived. And some people said "They're
nothing but a bunch of fascist robots, they're working for the government,
they're supporting the war in Vietnam." But that was a very small minority,
and the spirit that prevailed was in the spirit of Martin Luther King and
Mohandas Gandhi, mainly that we can have opponents but we have no enemies.

And so it was officially agreed on and announced at the Lincoln
Memorial rally and circulated widely that when we went to the Pentagon and
the troops, whatever action they took against us, our slogan, our chant,
our word to them--and it would be carried out by more than words or
slogans--was: you are our brothers, join us. You are victims too, join us.

That was the occasion on which when the troops were standing at the
main entrance of the Pentagon with their guns and their bayonets and the
demonstrators on the other side, when first one and then several others of
the demonstrators crossed the line and put a flower in the gun barrel of
the soldiers.

Now I wasn't there, I was with a group with Dr. Spock and Monsignor
Charles Rice who was very active with labour affairs in Pittsburgh and
others in one of the contingents that went around the side of the Pentagon.

But where I was, the troops as they came out and marched toward
us, were ordered to beat us up. Maybe--I don't know--maybe they were
suipposed to do what they did, but I think it was more than that. Because
Dr. Spock and Monsignor Rice and the rest of us had addressed the troops
when they were within hearing distance, we had bullhorns, and we'd talk to
them about why we were there and we'd express this spirit.

Anyway, when they came by with orders to beat us up I'd never been
so lightly love-tapped beaten in my whole life. I was hit on the head, hit
on the shoulders, kicked in the stomach, everything was like a little love
pat, there was no violence involved.

And on the faceoff on the steps of the Pentagon where the flowers
had been put in the barrels--we never read about it in the papers, but
after we got out of jail and we held a press conference, three GIs came to
that conference, said they had been moved by the events, and two of them
had laid down their guns, and they ended up court martialled.

Later, the GIs and the veterans became the cutting edge of the
anti-war movement. Certainly at that time nobody anticipated that the GIs
and the veterans would do that.

And although it was a minority who wanted to call them fascists and
robots and all the rest, nonetheless, nobody knew what was going to happen
with them and there were some long arguments about it, and some people who
felt very strongly about what they were doing and how they should be
treated.

I say never underestimate the ambivalence of any of our opponents,
even those who beat us and arrest us or whatever they do, tell lies about
us--the things we have been hearing about here. And sometimes the more
ambivalent they are the worse they will treat us because they are trying,
beyond suppressing us, they are trying to suppress their own best
instincts with which they are wrestling.

I'll give some examples of that later. But first I want to say,
never underestimate the dynamics of the system that has produced the war
crimes that have been testified to. And I won't go into a long analysis of
that, but I want to read a couple of quotes.

The first one is from way back in 1934 by Thomas Mann: "Russian
socialism has a powerful opponent in the West, Hitler, and this fact is
important to Britain's ruling class. The horror of Hitler's methods is
great, even in Britain. The Governor of the Bank of England was sent to
the United States to obtain credits for raw materials for Germany, that is,
armaments credits. German rearmament is taking place under British orders
and under British protection because Hitler is seen as the agent of capital
who maintains the status quo." He was talking about Britain, the same thing
was happening in the US, which is forgotten today.

And maybe in passing I should say I was lucky enough to have a
scholarship to study at Oxford University in 1936-37, and during that time
I made many trips in and out of Nazi Germany and was in touch with the
anti-Nazi underground. And when I came back to the United States, I joined
my comrades who were picketing and demonstrating and protesting to have the
US lower the immigration barriers to allow Jews to come in. There was a
quota--famous Jews like Thomas Mann--maybe they hadn't heard this quote
from him--and Albert Einstein and various others were admitted in, but they
never removed the immigration quotas and whole boatloads were turned
away--in Canada too at Halifax--and sunk at sea by German submarines,.

The next quote is from the President of General Electric
Corporation. He made it at the end of 1943, when he thought he could see
the end of the war.

"The time is approaching when we will have to deal with the longing
of the people for peace. We must take steps now to establish a permanent
wear economy."

And a top secret doument of the US State Dept written by a man who
has been more on our side than the State Dept.'s side. "We have about 50%
of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its population...In this situation,
we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in
the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit
us to maintain this position of disparity"

President Johnson said it when he visited South Vietnam, and I
think the sight of all those as yet obedient troops in uniform out in front
of him went to his head. He said something which I'm sure he didn't want
known publicly. "The trouble is that there's only 200 million of us and
there's nearly 3 billion of them, and they want what we've got and we're
not going to give it to them."

Now if you put all of those things together, and what conclusion I
at least draw from them, if you put all of that together with the profits
in the arms industry, you understand the background for some of the crimes
we've heard about in the last three days. And you understand why--although
one rarely hears it this way--why the US is rapidly becoming, has almost
become, a one crop economy.

Back in the 30s when I was first getting involved how could you
tell a colony? By the way they did away with the main, legitimate sources
of sustenance and support and income--subsistence farming and so forth,
crafts, all kinds of things--and they developed a single cash crop or two
best suited to the environment of that country to produce things for, they
used to call them the mother countries, the colonial powers. How are we
becoming a one crop country? I think it's very simple. And it's not just
the Unted States, it's here too, give or take a few details.

Because the American people have been colonized by the
transnational corporations. Now besides the tool in Third World countries
that results from that form of colonization, and besides the danger of the
nuclear holocaust which is associated with that and the guaranteed profits
of arms production, there's also a tremendous toll inside the US and Canada
and the other G-7 nations.

Inside the US at the present time according to a recent study be
economists of the Monthly Review, 1% of the U.S. population owns 51% of the
wealth.

The wealth of the typical white family is 12 times that of the
typical black family, if there is any typical.

The deaths of infants within the first year after childbirth is
double for blacks what it is for whites, the maternal death rate for blacks
is triple, the life expectancy of a black male is ten times less in the U.S.

[Former CIA agent] James Agee last night spoke about what happened
in Chile when they got all the dissenters together in a big stadium in
Chile and executed them and how the bodies drifted down the rivers for
days afterwards. If all of those people that I just told you who died
premature deaths were all gathered in a single stadium and executed and
their bodies drifted down, then we'd know that the anti-war movement has to
be more than about the violence of military war. It has to be about the
institutional violence of capitalism, the institutional violence of the
status quo.

Now the weapons are so horrible and the interventions are so
horrible that we tend to overlook that and we tend to fall into a trap
described years ago before the nuclear bomb by the poet Kenneth Patchen.
Speaking of the anti-war movement he said, You Know, the trouble is, they
want to get rid of war without getting rid of the causes of war.

I want to tell a story. It comes from my native Vermont. There was
a young fellow who was out walking on a mountain ridge on a spring day. It
was so beautiful he was watching the clouds and looking at the blue sky
that he wasn't looking at his feet and he tripped on a root. All of a
sudden he was hanging over a precipice and he looked down, it was almost
out of sight down there. He started to try and pull up and he felt weak,
maybe from fear, he wasn't quite sure. So he called up, "Is there anyone up
there?" It was a cloudless day. Somehow, miraculously, a thundercloud
appeared, and there was a bolt of lightning and thunder, and the voice
came, "Do you believe, my son?" "Yes yes, I believe." And he waited and he
waited and nothing happened. And then there was another clap of thunder and
bolt of lightning, and the voice said, "Do you have faith my son?" "Yes
yes I have faith!"

"Let go, then."

And in a moment he was shouting, "Is there anybody else up there?"

Well, I'm not talking about God or the great spirit or religion of
any kind. I'm talking about the curse of what we think of in democracy is
we are always looking for somebody up there to save us, and nobody is
going to save us except ourselves, except the united action of the people.

Well, so I said I wanted to say a few words about nonviolence and
the spirit.

We are subject to a constant barrage of propaganda to convince us
that we cannot win, you can't fight city hall, you can't fight Washington,
you can't fight the 7. That's why in my country at least they said all the
60s activists became yuppies. I was interviewed three to four hours by two
journalists for an article they were writing for Parade--the Sunday
supplement to magazines all over the US--they were writing about what
happened to the activists of the 60s. A month or six weeks later, I hadn't
heard from them, I got a call from one of them who said, Parade is not
interested in activists from the sixties who are still active.

If you listen to or read the US media you would never know that
there are more people arrested every year in the US for nonviolent
resistance of one kind or another than were arrested for the same type of
activity any year of the 60s. And beyond that we are strengthened,
broadened, deepened, somewhat matured for all of our serious flaws or
mistakes than we were in the 60s, thanks to the resurgence of the women's
movement, the lesbian and gay movement, the environmental movement, thanks
to artists, thanks to morally developed ex-CIA and FBI agents who have
testified at some of our trials and all the rest.

But will it do any good? I'll give one quick example. This again is
known and not known in our society. But if you read the back pages and
some publications you find out about some of these things. In June 1969 the
US delivered an ultimatum to Vietnam, that unless the North Vietnamese
withdrew their troops from South Vietnam and the NLF laid down their arms
they would suffer an atomic attack.

Now Kissinger explains this by saying we were working on the madman
Nixon system--I was trying to tell them he was mad and you couldn't know
what he would do--but other people on the inside have said that it was a
definite message: unless you do that, you will receive the atom bomb. What
happened? They didn't surreender, they didn't withdraw their troops, they
weren't atomic bombed.

The deadline was Nov. 1 when they had to do this or else. On Oct 15
was the Moratorium, which took place in more cities and towns in the US
than any previous simultaneous action and involved new layers of the
society, and on Nov. 15 which they could already tell about we had the
largest demonstration in American history until that time in Washington,
and so they knew, and you can read the Pentagon Papers and find out, they
knew they could not govern, not only if they dropped the atom bomb but if
they continued the war itself, and so they began to withdraw the troops,
step by step and painfully, because there were still a lot of unnecessary
deaths, and not magnanimously, because they, as the phrase went, changed
the colour of the corpses, they let the Vietnamese be the corposes and
tried to do away with the corposes coming home to the US because that was
raising too much trouble.

Well, I had other examples but I''ll skip them for now. One of the
things that the government does just because nonviolent direct action of
the united kind which I have been hinting at--because it is so powerful:
They try to turn us to violence, they try to play on our impateience, our
agony, our despair, sometimes, because the crimes keep on happening. And
not only that, but the agents provocateurs--and believe me, I know so many
of them first hand -- they said you're not a true revolutionary.

In Miami at the Democratic Convention of 1972 when the FBI had
organized 5 Red Star Collectives, all run by the FBI who came there to join
us--they brought guns, and when I, as cochairperson of the demonstration
and the activities there that week, spoke very strenuously against that
and so NO, we wouldn't touch them, they baited me, they said you're not a
revolutionary, you're not even a Leninist, you're nothing but a pacifist.

Well, what happened there--I spoke about the veterans--when the
veterans came down from an unfair trial that they were being subjected to
in Gainesville Florida, which ended just as the demonstrations were
beginning and heard what was going on, they automatically said anyone who
calls for guns or rocks is labelling himself or herself as an agent.

I don't know how many people knew who Fred Hampton was but he was
the chairman of thje Illinois Black Panther Party, and during our Chicago 8
and later Chicago 7 trial when Bobby Seale was in jail on another charge
and we had great difficulty meeting with him Fred Hampton represented him.
Marvelous person. Well, he was assassinated by the agents of the county
police and the civil rights branch of the justice department had a hand in
it. There's a lot I could tell you about that, how they tried to cover it
up, how the truth all came out , how they fed him drugs the night before so
he never woke up when they attacked and they killed someone else who was
awake.

That was during our trial in Chicago. We went down after court to
the Panther headquarters, which had been wrecked. We were all sitting on
the floor, and a guy sitting across from me, guarding the door I suppose,
because he was the security chief of the Black Panthers, he said to me,
"Well Dave, now I guess you understand why we had to pick up the gun. Now
I think you understand why YOU have to pick up the gun, why everybody has
to pick up the gun."

Well, it turned out I forget how long it was before we discovered
it, but that secuirity chief was in the employ of the FBI, probably the
person who drugged Fred Hampton that night.

Never think that nonviolent action is weaker than violent action.
The trouble is we have a double standard about it, besides our impatience
and so forth. When I sat there and that agent said that to me, I didn't
even answer. All I could think of is that I had worked with Martin Luther
King whom I loved and he had been killed, and he had become totally
nonviolent. I worked with Fred Hampton whom I loved and he had picked up
the gun in self defence but was an absolutely non-aggressive, nonviolent
person and he was dead, that was all I could think of.

When Martin Luther King was killed what do you suppose a lot of
good people said and all of the agents said? "He was the most nonviolent
man in the world, they killed him, nonviolence doesn't work." Well, the
problem is we have a double standard. If a nonviolent person is killed
--forgive me, but if someone was killed next week, a lot of people will
say it didn't work, we should have done something different. But people say
that without saying everytime an armed insurgent or soldier is killed,
militarism doesn't work. I mean there are other reasons people say
militarism doesn't work, but we do not draw that conclusion.

Brian Willson lost his legs on the tracks in Concord California. I
spent a lot of time with Brian both before that and after that.
Statistically, the loss of Brian's legs was insignificant beside the number
of limbs, guts, everything, lost in Nicaragua, El Salvador, one could go on
and on. But as he has said, spiritually and politically, the loss of his
legs has a tremendous impact to give new vision and energy to our movement.
And what we agree together is that there is no way a nonviolent movement
can counter the power of a violent movement unless our soldiers, our
nonviolent warriors are prepared to take every risk that a soldier takes,
in their case, either willingly or unwillingly. They have to do it.

And I want to quote something from Martin Luther King. "We must now
work out programs to bring the social change movements through from their
early and now inadequate protest phase to a stage of massive, active
nonviolent resistance to the modern American system. And by the way when he
says the modern American system, he says, "For years I laboured with the
idea of reforming the existing institutions, a little change here, a little
change there. Now I feel quite differently. I think you've got to have a
reconstruction of the entire society, a revolution of values. The evils of
capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and evils of racism."

I would like to know how many people in all of the celebrations and
observances they have attended about Martin Luther King how many ever heard
those quotations? He made those statements toward the end of his life, and
I believe they're one of the reasons his life was ended.

I want to conclude by saying, so, should we all rush out to the
barricades tomorrow and risk our lives and legs and all the rest? No.
William Penn once said, to a soldier who was uneasy about carrying a sword,
and asked him what he should do about it. William Penn said, "Wear it as
long as you can."

I think we all have to find our level at the time and remember
human beings have seasons just like there are seasons in nature. It may not
be the right time for you and me to do some of these things for a whole
variety of reasons, maybe you're ready to at some point but it's not a good
season.

I was talking last night about a friend of mine who came east on a
white horse--i like to tease him about that--from Chicago to the East Coast
where, with typical east coast arrogance all of the national peace
organizations were located.

And he had looked into the abyss of nuclear holocaust in 1956
before a lot of other people had, and the US was developing the Polaris
Missile--and he came and awakened and educated a lot of people and did
great things in those anti-war movements and outside them, but he became so
fanatical about the fact that it may go off in the next three or four or
six months that he began to guilt trip people, and there wasn't time to
climb a mountain or learn to play music or start a family or read or write
a book, any of the things that make life go on, and are creative, what the
Indians call Touching the Earth.

It would be Do Nothing, there wasn't time for that. And I saw that
it had short run good results and bad run long results. And another
guy--one of the Chicago 8--I sat on a platform with him and I heard him say
the next three weeks will determine the future of western civilization.
Well it was great for getting people to come to that demonstration, but it
wasn't exactly balanced!

Charlie Parker has this to say: Jazz comes from who you are, where
you've been, what you learned. If you don't live it, it won't come out of
your horn." And if we don't learn to say yes to life ...in the long run, we
need to become as whole as we can, and we cannot in the long run say no to
death and destruction and violence unless we're simultaneously , even when
we're putting our bodies on the line, saying yes to life and love and
laughter.

(Following extensive appluase, Dave relates some anecdotes about the power
of nonviolence)

Just before I went to prison the first time, in September of 1940,
I had a mob come to my house and God knows what they intended to do with
me. But I was saved by a fascist. I was running a youth program in an inner
city church, and when I came to do that there was a fascist who was
training the kids in arms and military walks and all the rest and I went
right to him and I didn't say get out, you can't do it, and I also didn't
say well, you know, I think you're right, it's a great country, but I
talked straight with him and over the months we came to trust each
other--not to agree with our politics--from my point of view he seemed to
get a little better--but he was still a right winger. But when that mob
came--they probably picked him up on the way to be part of it-- he stood
them off, he said, don't you lay a hand on him, this guy is honest, this
guy this, this guy that.

We don't always see the results. Here's another example. The first
time a met a certain policeman on the steps of the Capitol in Washington,
he took his billy club and got me in the guts and because I had had an
operation and was not completely recovered, I had to go back for another
operation. The next time I met him on those same steps six months later, he
had his club up like this and somebody held him and said "Stop, that's
Dellinger, he's okay."

Now it won't always work that way--I mean, look, King is dead,
Gandhi was killed. But you're sowing seeds. What we have to represent is a
new spirit, and that new spirit of unbreakable human solidarity and what I
like to call the sacredness of every human being.

I was in prison during World War II with the worst criminals who
had done the worst possible brutal crimes, and I found out if you lived
with them they weren't that much different from you and me.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

In speaking to sentencing at the end of the Chicago conspiracy trial,
Dellinger told Judge Hoffman, "I think that every judge should be required
to spend time in prison before sentencing other people there so that he
might become aware of the degrading antihuman conditions that persist not
only in Cook County Jail but in the prisons generally of this country.

I feel more compassion for you, sir, than I do any hostility. I feel
that you are a man who has had too much power over the lives of too many
people for too many years. You are doing, and undoubtedly feeling correct
and righteous, as often happens when people do the most abominable things.
. . .

My second point is whatever happens to us, however unjustified, will be
slight compared to what has happened already to the Vietnamese people, to
the black people in this country, to the criminals with whom we are now
spending our days in the Cook County jail.

I must have already lived longer than the normal life expectancy of a
black person born when I was born, or born now. I must have already lived
longer, twenty years longer, than the normal life expectancy in the
underdeveloped countries which this country is trying to profiteer from and
keep under its domain and control.

Thirdly, I want to say that sending us to prison, any punishment the
Government can impose upon us, will not solve the problem of this country's
rampant racism, will not solve the problem of economic injustice, it will
not solve the problem of the foreign policy and the attacks upon the
underdeveloped people of the world.

Finally, all the way through this I have been ambivalent in my attitude
toward you because there is something spunky about you that one has to
admire, however misguided and intolerant I believe you are. All the way
through the trial, sort of without consciousness or almost against my own
will I keep comparing you to George III of England, perhaps because you are
trying to hold back the tide of history although you will not succeed,
perhaps because you are trying to stem and forestall a second American
revolution. . . .

I only wish that we were all not just more eloquent, I wish we were
smarter, more dedicated, more united. I wish we could work together. I
wish we could reach out to the Forans and the Schultzes and the Hoffmans,
and convince them of the necessity of this revolution.

I think I shall sleep better and happier with a greater sense of
fulfillment in whatever jails I am in for the next however many years than
if I had compromised, if I had pretended the problems were any less real
than they are, or if I had sat here passively in the courthouse while
justice was being throttled and the truth was being denied. You want us
to be like good Germans supporting the evils of our decade and then when we
refused to be good Germans and came to Chicago and demonstrated, now you
want us to be like good Jews, going quietly and politely to the
concentration camps while you and this court suppress freedom and the
truth. And the fact is that I am not prepared to do that.

You want us to stay in our place like black people were supposed to
stay in their place, like poor people were supposed to stay in their place,
like people with formal education are supposed to stay in their place, like
women are supposed to stay in their place, like children are supposed to
stay in their place, like lawyers are supposed to stay in their places. It
is a travesty on justice and if you had any sense at all you would know
that the record that you read condemns you and not us. And it will be one
of thousands and thousands of rallying points for a new generation of
Americans who will not put up with tyranny, will not put up with a facade
of democracy without the reality.

I sat here and heard that man Mr. Foran say evil, terrible,
dishonest things that even he could not believe in. I heard him say that
and you expect me to be quiet and accept that without speaking up. People
no longer will be quiet. People are going to speak up. I am an old man and
I am just speaking feebly and not too well, but I reflect the spirit that
will echo throughout the world.